In A Good Crime Investigation, It All Depends On The Evidence, Which Is Where Hartford Homicide Detective Michael Perodeau Comes In

February 20, 1994|By Maria Alvarez; Courant Staff Writer

The shooting victim sat up nonchalantly in an emergency room hospital bed with his hands politely folded on his lap.

Seemingly the picture of health, the 21- year-old had just survived two gunshot wounds to the back of the neck and head. He was shot as he sat in a car next to 95 Huntington St.

Hartford Det. Michael Perodeau, who was questioning the man, asked him whether he played the lottery.

``Play 095,'' Perodeau said with a chuckle as he stepped behind the victim to get a better look at the bullet wounds. Perodeau always advises survivors of shootings to play the numbers of the address where they were shot.

The victim smirked and offered a vague description of his assailant, which didn't surprise Perodeau, who knew more about what happened that frigid evening than he let on.

The man in the bed said he was robbed at gunpoint by someone who wanted his money and jewelry. Perodeau thought evidence found at the scene told a different story - although the victim was never charged with any wrongdoing in the incident. A box of baking soda loosely covered in plastic wrap like a package of heroin or cocaine was found on the sidewalk.

When Perodeau alluded to the possible scenario of a drug rip-off, the man's face turned to stone and he remained silent.

For the past two years Perodeau has worked as a detective in the department's evidentiary services division, which processes and documents all physical evidence at homicides, shootings and fatal car accidents. At 46, he is a collector and photographer of bullet casings, bloody clothes and remnants.

After seven years of walking the beat on Albany Avenue in the city's North End and five years arresting drug dealers when he worked at vice and narcotics, Perodeau now photographs dead bodies. Sometimes the bodies are of the same people he flushed out of drug dens.

Perodeau is one of four people in evidentiary services. His experience has fine-tuned his senses to smell blood on a bullet-riddled shirt from a distance. He can expertly track the course of a .45-caliber bullet fired from a gun into the body of a victim and onto a blood-stained sidewalk.

It's a hands-on job.

At the Huntington Street crime scene, Perodeau, using his 35mm camera and flash, photographed the bullet casing found next to the car, the interior of the car and the tire tracks left in the snow as the car left the driveway.

The next day, Perodeau searched for bullet holes and casings in the car, which had been taken to a police garage. Perodeau squeezed his fingers into the crevices and folds of car seats and headrests, and in between dashboard moldings, in search of bullet casings. He swabbed door locks for gun-powder residue - all under the watchful, anxious eye of homicide detectives, who stayed on Perodeau's heels, waiting for a piece of evidence to turn up.

Then there are the reams of detailed paperwork. Neatness, organization and accuracy are essential, despite the 34 homicides that had to be documented last year. Through Feb. 10 of this year, there have been six homicides.

And in between those investigations there were the shootings of victims who, though hit several times, somehow survived.

``I've seen people with eight or nine holes in them and they were out of the hospital in a day or two. . . . I've seen ones when you look inside their body you see a bullet tear everything apart. It's amazing. I always say it depends on whether it will be your day or not.''

When interviewing shooting victims, such as the man shot on Huntington Street, Perodeau is not taken aback by their cool composure.

``He knew he was going to live. When they're going to die they call out for their mama or God,'' he said with a serious smile that raised his eyebrows.

Perodeau says investigating homicides leaves little room for amusing anecdotes to share with family and friends.

``The problem is you hold it in,'' said Perodeau. He has to remind himself to be more open about his feelings and sometimes has to resist the desire to be alone. He has developed a humorous, off- beat disposition in an atmosphere of death.

When the emergency room nurse grew impatient with his banter, she sternly asked him to finish his work and clear out. Perodeau, who still had not collected the victim's bloody clothes, smiled and coyly walked up behind the nurse, who was moving equipment, and asked for a plastic bag and gloves. The nurse offered them with a smile.

His jaunty, flip disposition is refreshing to police officers, emergency room nurses and hospital workers, who, like Perodeau, are surrounded by tragic and senseless death.

He learned a lesson about humor and death during his first visit to the medical examiner's office in Farmington to photograph a body.

Trying not to feel ghoulish, Perodeau was taken by surprise when he was greeted by a secretary dressed in a black-cat outfit and then found himself shaking hands with the medical examiner, who stepped out of his office wearing a construction tool belt instead of a medical bag.